The adventures of jamun hunters

DURING my schooldays, I loved three trees with all my heart and soul — jamun, guava and mango. No other tree is as generous to children as jamun. You don’t have to throw stones at its tree to make it part with its fruits, unlike mango and guava. It sheds its berries unasked for. Decades ago in Madras, there were many houses with a big backyard, each having a variety of fruit trees.

While the mango season arrives during the summer months, jamun trees bear fruits in July-August. Janmashtami is celebrated during the jamun season. At our home, jamun continues to occupy a pride of place among our offerings to Lord Krishna.

My friends and I were crazy about this fruit. We dedicated Sundays and holidays of July and August to what we called the jamun hunt. We used to invade backyards of our locality like a troop of monkeys to stuff our mouths with fruits. Mango is delicious, guava is tasty, but a ripe jamun is heavenly. All jamun trees are not the same. Some bear small berries with relatively big stones; others, big berries with small stones.

There was a big jamun tree in my uncle’s house which literally carpeted the ground under its branches with supersized succulent berries that used to fall non-stop like a drizzle. One had to just lie down on one’s back with the mouth open. A berry or two was sure to drop straight into it with a plop.

Every time we came home after our jamun expeditions, our faces, hands and dresses bore juice stains which could not be removed easily. Mothers used to struggle hard to rid their children’s clothes of these tenacious stains. Our street had big houses with jamun trees. Those who owned these houses were nice people. During the jamun season, they used to throw open their gates to children of the neighbourhood.

In one house, there lived a retired Army officer with a Sam Manekshaw moustache. He used to spend his afternoon hours sitting in an armchair, reading one of his favourite books under a nearby neem tree. He allowed us to enter his premises on one condition: We should not hurl stones at his beloved jamun tree.

“Pick up and eat the fallen fruit as much as you like and go contentedly. But if you throw stones at my tree, I will throw you all out” was his military order. He also did not permit us to climb his tree as there had been an accident in which a boy fractured his leg when he fell off his perch. In an attempt to please him, we used to chant loudly ‘Jai Jawan’ when we entered and ‘Jai Jamun’ when we departed.